12/20/99 - Out of darkness, when sun is in short supply, artificial light may lift seasonal depression

• My favorite time of the year is coming - and it's not Christmas. It's the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, and in Boston at least, it will arrive on Wednesday at 2:44 a.m. That's the moment when the sun, at least as seen from the earth, appears to halt in its annual southward trajectory and begins to make its way northward again.

12/13/99 - Detecting, treating bladder cancer early

• Four years ago, Ellen Pinzur, a Cambridge woman who had been a lifetime smoker, got a most unwelcome surprise. When she went to her gynecologist for a routine exam, he suspected she had a fibroid, a benign growth in the uterus. He sent her for an ultrasound. Sure enough, she did have a fibroid. But, that was the good news.

12/06/99 - E-therapy is hardly a bargain

• We've got e-commerce, e-banking, e-pharmacy and of course, e-mail. So why not e-therapy?

11/29/99 - Trendy pill should be taken with a grain of salt

• She's a young woman from the South Shore, finally able both to work and to study for an advanced degree. But for years, she's been plagued by severe depression that stems, she says, from physical abuse she suffered as a child, and from sexual abuse when she was 17.

11/22/99 - The unhealthy side of health concerns

• It's been years now, but I can still picture the articulate young woman with the mysterious disease who came to the Globe to see me.   She was armed with a stack of medical papers and spoke with the ease of a scientist about possible causes, symptoms, and tests. But what was most striking was how much her identity seemed to be wrapped up in her illness.

11/18/99 - Thalidomide, once a pariah drug, finds a new life in cancer therapy

• Thalidomide, once banned in the United States after it caused serious birth defects in 10,000 babies worldwide four decades ago, can produce dramatic improvements in people with a cancer of the bone marrow, according to a study being published today.

11/15/99 - Here's to your health, the benefits of drinking outweigh the risks, but only within limits

• On Thursday, the French will go nuts. We know this because they go nuts every year on the third Thursday of November, the day the latest crop of just-off-the-vine wines hit the market.

11/08/99 - Cutting-edge drugs a must in treating rare cancer

• With any serious disease, it's obviously a good idea to find the best doctor - and the best hospital - you can. But with ovarian cancer, a rare disease that strikes 25,000 women a year, kills nearly 15,000, and is almost impossible to detect early - it's absolutely essential.

11/01/99 - Site has all the research that fits

• In the elite world of medical research, Dr. Harold Varmus is at the top of the heap. He runs the government's biggest health research engine, the National Institutes of Health, and won the 1989 Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work on cancer genes. Yet Varmus, 59, has proposed such a radical, power-to-the-people idea involving Internet publishing that the rest of the medical establishment is at his throat.

10/18/99 - Chocolate's not so dark secret

• I slip it reverentially into my mouth. Luscious, gooey, it melts on my taste buds, caresses my tongue. I stop talking, thinking, even breathing. I have but one sense: Taste. I have but one love: Chocolate. Nanoseconds later, the guilt sets in. I imagine my arteries seizing, my weight soaring. Yet I am powerless: I want more.

10/11/99 - Treatments improve, but hepatitis C still a threat

• For decades, hepatitis C, a potentially fatal liver virus harbored by 3 million Americans, was a virtual black box. Scientists knew there was some kind of nasty virus afoot in the land -- and in the nation's blood supply. In fact, they knew that one in five people who got a blood transfusion came down with infections caused by it. But they couldn't find the virus itself. In fact, they didn't even have a name for the disease it caused, dubbing it simply non-A, non-B hepatitis.

10/04/99 - Herbal prostate drug goes mainstream

• If you're male and you live long enough, there's virtually no escaping the indignities and agonies of an enlarged prostate. In young men, this gland, which surrounds the urethra (the tube through which urine passes) and is the size of a chestnut, secretes part of the seminal fluid that nourishes sperm and speeds it on its way.

09/27/99 - Cell transplants, drugs tested for spinal injuries

• To understand the enormity of trying to restore nerve function in people with spinal cord injuries is to be taunted by a puzzling paradox. Nerves in the spinal cord and those in the periphery -- the arms and legs -- are basically the same. They all transmit information picked up by feelers (dendrites) on one end of the nerve cell and send out signals via filaments (axons) on the other side. Signals from axons tell muscles when to contract -- allowing us to breathe, swallow, urinate, defecate or swallow.Hormones

09/20/99 - A glimmer of hope - a paralyzed person may walk again

• Ten years ago scientists scoffed at the thought that a paralyzed person could walk again; today they're counting on it. Four years after being paralyzed from the neck down in a riding accident, Christopher Reeve is preparing to walk again, a feat long assumed to be impossible for any quadriplegic, even Superman. As scientists work to develop drugs to minimize acute spinal cord damage and hunt for new ways to spur regeneration even long afterwards, Reeve is trying to "meet the scientists halfway. . ."

09/13/99 - Plaque can gum up the works in legs

• Dr. Zdan Korduba, an anesthesiologist at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York, wound up having one toe amputated, losing months of work and feeling like a total chump for missing symptoms he'd have spotted right away in a patient. Beginning five years ago, he says ruefully, he began noticing that his legs hurt after tennis: "I got tremendous cramps, but I put it off as being out of shape." Before long, he found he couldn't walk the same distance as before. I kept denying this to myself. 

09/06/99 - Spit's new image: a tool for diagnosing disease

• Among ancient peoples, it is said, this precious bodily fluid was used as the basis of a primitive lie detector test. The accused would be given a handful of rice and told to swallow it; if he couldn't, it meant he was nervous - and guilty. This slippery stuff also helps moisten and digest food, and has healing powers as well - proteins that fight bacteria, fungi and viruses and others that speed tissue healing, says Dr. Irwin Mandel, professor emeritus at Columbia University. In fact, animals that lick their wounds heal faster than those who don't.

08/09/99 - Odd remedy said to slow deadly cancer

• Four years ago, Betty Frizzell, a retired schoolteacher from Cookeville, Tenn., was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest malignancies there is. Normally, people with advanced tumors, like Frizzell's, live only about five months after they are diagnosed. Frizzell, now 64, is thriving on a diet of fruits and vegetables plus a regimen of dietary supplements including pancreatic enzymes and -- believe it or not -- coffee enemas.

08/02/99 - Procedures done in the womb both amaze and raise many questions

• Etched in the memories of Dennis and Melinda Stover is the day they learned their baby would be born with spina bifida.It was January, and Melinda, a 26-year-old-bank teller from Murfreesboro, Tenn., was 20 weeks pregnant. She was having an ultrasound exam because they already had two girls ``and if it were a boy, we had a lot of stuff to buy,'' said Dennis, a 31-year old surgeon's assistant. No matter what the exam might show, abortion was unthinkable: ``We're born-again Christians.''

07/26/99 - Rotator cuff is a tough but fragile thing

• Problems with the shoulder, the second most unruly joint in the body after the knee, send 4 million Americans to their doctors each year. With young people -- and active older folks as well -- it's usually a sports injury. But aging, along with plain old wear-and-tear, also wreak havoc on this flexible yet delicate joint.

07/19/99 - Picturing heart disease another way

• Richard Knorr's heart is making medical history. But there's actually not much that's unusual about it. Though two of his coronary arteries are partially blocked, the 64-year-old Framingham man has never had a heart attack and he can control his chest pain with medications.

07/12/99 - Cancer patients battle fatigue

• By this time Dr. Candace Jennings, 50, an orthopedic surgeon from Ipswich, figured she'd be back to work and blessed again with plenty of energy for her husband and sons, 7 and 13. But even though it's been a year since she finished chemotherapy and radiation for breast cancer, she's only got half the energy she used to have. She tried to go back to work but had to give it up -- ``the energy demand was too much,'' she says. And her doctors, while sympathetic, haven't offered much hope. 

07/05/99 - Sorting out benefits, risks of HRT

• It's never been easy sorting out the pros and cons of taking estrogen supplements at menopause. Women have always had to weigh the many benefits -- reduced hot flashes, lower risk of heart disease, osteoporosis, colon cancer, and perhaps Alzheimer's -- against the modest but distressing risks, notably an increased chance of breast cancer and blood clots. But lately, with every new study, it's gotten more complicated.

06/28/99 - Orphan diseases leave patients on their own

• Doctors have a saying: When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras, which means: if you're stumped by a diagnosis, think of the most likely cause, not the rarest or most exotic. But for 20 to 25 million Americans, the problem really does turn out to be zebras, that is, one of more than 6,000 rare diseases. And that rarity can be a huge problem, far beyond whatever emotional and physical toll the disease itself takes.

06/21/99 - Clues but no answers on schizophrenia

• As a high school kid, Moe Armstrong had lots going for him. "We were poor people," he says, but he was captain of the football team in Bushnell, Ill., and with his high hopes for a military career, was clearly his parents' "dream." While serving in Vietnam, however, Armstrong, now 55 and living in Cambridge, says he "cracked up." He heard "rustling and whistling sounds," then voices. He had visual hallucinations, too, but thought he was just "nervous because of the war."

06/14/99 - A visit most men would rather not make

• Melvin Small, a 36-year-old Dorchester man who works as a parking lot cashier, has your basic guy-thing about going to the doctor. "I'm not really into doctors and stuff like that," he says. When he finally does go, he asks no questions because he doesn't want to hear anything bad. "I let him tell me," he says.

06/07/99 - Cancer treatment needs emotional rescue

• Last week, Harvard researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that 28 percent of newly-diagnosed breast cancer patients turn to complementary therapies such as massage, herbs, relaxation techniques, and self-help groups -- even though they had never used so-called alternative medicine before. In fact, the women most likely to turn to such therapies, the researchers found, were the ones who suffered the most anxiety and depression in the first three months after diagnosis.

05/31/99 - Instant grief therapy may be no quick fix

• Boston University psychiatrist and trauma specialist Dr. Bessel van der Kolk likes to tell the story of his trip to Puerto Rico 10 years ago after Hurricane Hugo. The place was humming. ``Everybody was rebuilding houses. I came into this devastated island scene of human resiliency,'' he says. Then the feds swooped in, telling people how to get reimbursed and go about recovery. ``All the rebuilding stopped. People sat in homeless shelters. It interrupted the natural healing process.''

05/24/99 - Some just say yes to novel detox program

• For Monica Cianci, a 38-year-old housewife in Cranston, R.I., hell began five years ago -- and getting cancer was just the beginning. Before her cancer surgery, she'd had ``no trouble with drugs.'' But afterward, she wound up addicted to prescription painkillers, opiate drugs like Vicodin and Percocet.

05/17/99 - Drugs could eradicate a fatal cancer

• For years now, the incidence of some types of lymphoma -- the cancer that killed former US Sen. Paul Tsongas, Jackie Onassis and Jordan's King Hussein -- has been among the fastest rising of all cancers, and no one is quite sure why. The death rate has been increasing, too. This year, 64,000 Americans will get lymphoma and 27,000 will die from it. 

05/10/99 - Is there a doctor in the hospital

• Several months ago, when Lloyd A. Coombs, 61, a retired machinist from Springfield, was rushed to the hospital with congestive heart failure, he was surprised to find the person in charge of his care would not be his primary doctor but one he'd never heard of with a title he'd never come across: hospitalist.

05/03/99 - Beating anger

• Blame it on Aristotle, who believed that watching tragic plays led to a healthy catharsis of emotions like pity and fear. Or on Freud, who, at least in his early days, also took the hydraulic view -- that pent-up feelings, like steam in a pressure cooker, need release lest they cause hysteria or phobia.

04/26/99 - Lyme disease vaccine is only part of answer

• With summer -- and tick season -- fast approaching, there's a new weapon available to reduce your chances of catching Lyme disease: a vaccine called LYMErix, approved by the Food and Drug Administration late last year. Now, the bad news. The vaccine isn't approved for kids under 15 or people over 70. It protects about 80 percent of the people who get it, and that's if you get three shots, which, according to current FDA licensing, must be taken over 12 months. 

04/19/99 - Skin ailment leaves people red-faced

• What Allison Taylor hates most about rosacea, the skin problem that turns faces red and makes people look like they've had a few too many, is the chronic embarrassment. "I wear a lot of makeup because I'm so self-conscious," says Taylor, 35, who manages a medical practice in Boston. "I always look sunburned. People ask me if I don't feel well."

04/05/99 - Alcohol's insidious grip

• Barbara Raymond, now in her mid-50's, started drinking hard as a 15-year-old in Abington. At the time, she had no idea why, though she later linked it to depression. She made her first suicide attempt at 16. At 18, in the throes of alcoholic amnesia, she married a man she'd known for two weeks. He turned out to be an alcoholic and a batterer who broke her arm and gave her "a bunch of bruises" over the years. She rarely sought care, she says: ``I was too ashamed.''

03/29/99 - Hopes dim for controversial breast cancer treatment

• Convinced by doctors that bone marrow transplantation offered the best chance at survival, thousands of women with breast cancer have agreed to the controversial procedure -- despite the lack of proof that it could save, or even prolong, their lives more than standard therapy. Indeed, so many women -- about 5,000 women a year -- now undergo the treatment, arguably the most devastating procedure in modern medicine, that breast cancer has become the most common reason for transplants, edging out leukemia.

03/22/99 - Chronic pain often goes untreated because some doctors don't believe their patients 

• James Murphy is only 26, but some days, he can hardly get out of bed. Three years ago, Murphy, a North Easton man who used to fix power tools for a living, damaged a disc in his back lifting a steel workbench. The injury allowed the jelly-like material that cushions vertebrae to ooze out and press on a nerve. Pain raged through his lower back and shot down his right leg.

03/15/99 - Anxiety over antidepressants

• Modern anti-depressants, for which Americans spent more than $5.6 billion last year, have been a huge boon, partly because they have few disastrous side effects, even in overdose. With older, ``tricyclic'' anti-depressants like Elavil, for instance, ``a 10-day supply could kill you,'' says Dr. Michael Jenike, associate chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. The newer drugs, called SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, are rarely fatal.

03/08/99 - New drugs fight sores from cancer treatment

• The worst part of Colleen Combes' breast cancer treatment three years ago, besides losing her hair, was the awful mouth sores caused by chemotherapy. These ulcers ``were like canker sores that had broken open, only much worse. They were everywhere -- on my tongue, the inside of my lips, my cheeks. It was very painful. I couldn't eat. It was difficult to talk,'' says Combes, a 41-year old Rockland woman currently on leave from her job in a law firm.

03/01/99 - Sugar's 'empty' calories pile up